


Without a Remainder: A Ghost Story

by Vintage (sour_gummies)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Absent Parents, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Angst, Bullying, Changing the past, Child Abuse, Fate & Destiny, Friendship/Love, Gen, Historical Inaccuracy, Historical References, M/M, Past Character Death, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 14:32:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3491861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sour_gummies/pseuds/Vintage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tsukishima Kei was four years old, he met his first-ever friend: a boy named Yamaguchi who lived in the Tsukishimas’ home, through one-half of a narrow, forgotten hallway tucked between the walls. </p>
<p>It was strange to have a companion that really liked him, but even stranger was Yamaguchi himself. The way he didn’t age like Tsukishima did. The intangibility and glasslike transparency of his skin. The fact that nobody else but Tsukishima could see or hear him. And the relentless, terrible excitement Yamaguchi expressed regarding an important date back in his own time beyond the hall—a day that was perpetually around the corner, yet never seemed to arrive....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Without a Remainder: A Ghost Story

**Author's Note:**

> A self-indulgent ghost AU based on _Stonewords,_ a children's novel by Pam Conrad that I've always loved. Obviously, you don't need to read it to enjoy this story.
> 
> * * *

Years later—long after the events of his childhood were over—Tsukishima would wonder time and again, how he never connected the events of that day with the ghost in the hall.

He couldn’t explain why he never thought about it. The way his older brother had paused that night, in the dim glow of the moonlight, straightening from the grass with his eyes locked on the expansive backyard wall. His attention drawn away from what he’d come for in the first place, an errant volleyball lying in the grass.

“Niichan?” Tsukishima hadn’t hesitated to trot after his older brother, skinny four-year-old legs already promising how tall he’d be someday. “What’s wrong?”

That had been before. Back when Tsukishima loved his brother unconditionally. Would trust him over anyone else in the world. When he could think of Akiteru's memory without the bitter taste of rage.

Akiteru had turned to him, smiling with an expression of insincere gladness. It was a look Tsukishima wouldn’t learn to read until years later, when his brother was already dead to him.

“Nah, nothing’s wrong,” Akiteru said, smile softening as he looked back reached out a hand toward a lusterless metal plaque on the wall that Tsukishima hadn’t noticed. His fingertips brushed the rusted bronze. “It’s a memorial plate, from a long time ago. For a person that used to live here.”

“Live here? In our house?” Tsukishima asked skeptically. The home where he and his family lived could hardly be that old, the interior sleek and furnished in Western style furniture and embellishments from top to bottom.

Akiteru turned to him again, smile crooked. “That’s right, Kei,” he said. “Back before the place got remodeled, when the owners who had it before us still lived here. Or maybe it was the owners before that...anyway, something bad happened, I guess. And the kid that lived here ended up passing away when he was ten.” _Only a few years older than you,_ he’d probably thought then, eyes resting unblinkingly on his younger brother.

Oblivious, Tsukishima—who up to that point in his life, had never had any reason to be acquainted with death—found this tidbit of history very boring indeed compared to volleyball practice. “Huh,” he said flatly anyway, still young and enamored enough of his brother to feign some interest. “How’d it happen, niichan?”

“Wish I knew,” Akiteru murmured, once more letting his gaze return to the faded metal rectangle inlaid in the bricks. “It’s impossible to read except the name. ‘Yamaguchi.’ They probably hung it up for him decades ago...”

Impatient, and unsure of what to say, Tsukishima had picked up the volleyball and held it in his hands. Akiteru stood there lost in thought in thought for another moment, before he finally drew his hand away from the memorial plaque.

“That’s probably long enough a break for you, huh, kiddo?” he teased, ruffling his younger brother’s blond hair. “Don’t want my baby brother to get too tired from practicing.”

“Nii _chaaan...!”_

They went back to playing after that. For Tsukishima, the engraved words on the wall for the dead boy went forgotten until years later, when he finally asked Akiteru about it. When he did, his brother had lied to him. Again.

Tsukishima thought that Akiteru's lies were probably why he had kept the memory of that night pushed down for so many years. Because that was what he’d done with _all_ the memories of his older brother, after the incident in middle school.

Tsukishima wasn’t stupid, after all. Not as clever as he should have been, not enough to stop events to come, but certainly not unintelligent. He should have easily connected it with the ghost, once, in so many years and back of living in that house.

But in the end, the faded plaque only become one more mystery about Yamaguchi. One that went unsolved for years, until it was already too late, even before it began.


End file.
